clear light on some passages of the Gospels, which cannot as yet be said to have received a straightforward and satisfactory explanation.

In the discourse recorded by St. Matthew, xi. 7, our Saviour quotes both the predictions of Malachi, but with a marked distinction in their application. Without any qualifying expressions whatever, he states in the plainest manner concerning John the Baptist-"This is he of whom it is written, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." How different and guarded are his words when asserting that the same John was Elias! "If ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." This difference of manner plainly shews that John was not so clearly and literally Elias, as he was the messenger there spoken of; and suggests to us the idea that Christ in the latter instance was using the figurative language of prophecy, which constantly applies to the type the name and qualities of the antitype. It certainly cannot be thought more strange to find the Lord referring to John the Baptist under the title of Elijah, than to see his servant Peter (Acts ii. 20) applying to the destruction of Jerusalem the accompanying expression, "the great and terrible day of the Lord :" "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord."

The great error of the interpretative theology among the Jews arose from allowing their judgment to be biassed by their passions. They would not hear of a suffering Messiah; and applied to the first coming of the Son of Man the prophecies which belonged to the second, when the sons of Jacob were to have dominion over the Gentiles and Jerusalem was to become the metropolis of the world. This radical error led them into a corresponding mistake concerning the forerunner that was to appear in their times; and consistently enough with their ideas, they were expecting the return of Elijah the Tishbite to prepare the way for the Lord of glory. The apostles, too, had fallen into the common error of the day in supposing that Christ was then going to assume his great power and glory to restore the kingdom to Israel; and were confirmed in that belief by the appearance of Elias at the transfiguration. They could not, therefore, understand our Saviour's declaration that the Son of Man should rise from the dead; but questioned one with another what the rising from the dead, as it referred to the Son of Man, should mean. To gain farther information, they proposed their doubts under the name of the authorized teachers of the nation, and asked him "Why say the Scribes that Elias must first come?" In reply, our Saviour did not tell them that they had been misled by their teachers, or that the opinion itself was unreasonable; on the contrary, he seemed rather to acknowledge the justness of that expectation by saying, "Elias truly shall first come" before the thorough establishment of Messiah's kingdom; although he set them right as to their immediate expectations by telling them that the Elijah, adapted to the opening of the Gospel scheme, was already come: "I say unto you that Elias is come already." The general propriety of the mode of interpretation here offered will be more clearly seen by comparing this passage with VOL. IV.-Dec. 1833.

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another, in which two distinct advents of the Son of Man are men

tioned together.

Matt. xvi. 17.-The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

18. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

Matt. xvii. 2.-Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.

12. But I say unto you, Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.

To the first pair of these verses, which speak of the future advent of the Son of Man and of Elias, I would apply in illustration these words of your Correspondent H.: "The office of preparatory preacher, making straight the way of the Lord, belongs to Elias in respect of that portion of his mortal career which he has yet to close, and of that coming of the Son to which we all look forward." To the second pair of verses, which speak of the past advent of the Son and of Elias, I apply these other words of the same author: "As Christ came (at his first advent) with a limited display of power and none of glory, to lay the immoveable foundation of his church and kingdom, so John then went before him in humble guise, but so far in the spirit and power of Elias that he had knowledge and authority to restore the lost truth in Israel." The subject will receive farther illustration by a similar comparison of the Evangelist with the prophet.

Matt. xvii. 2.-Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come and restore all things.

12. But I say unto you, Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.

Mal. iv. 5.-Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.

iii. 1.-Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.

According to St. Mark i. 1, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ" took place in the fulfilment of the two prophecies concerning the "voice" and the "messenger;" the prediction concerning Elias respects not the beginning, but the perfect establishment of Messiah's kingdom, which was an event remotely distant in the evangelist's days, and to ourselves is still future.

I shall now endeavour to illustrate a passage of St. Mark, ix. 12, which at present labours under some confusion both with respect to grammatical accuracy and historical truth:--

"And he said unto them:

Elias shall first come and restore all things,

As it is written [of the Son of Man,]

That he may suffer many things and be set at nought;

But I say unto you:

That indeed Elias is come,

And they did to him what they listed,

As it is written [of him]."

In the clause "As it is written of the Son of Man," I have adopted the various reading raws instead of kai wç, for that line, like the last one of all, is a complete sentence in itself. Farther, the expression yéypanrai iva náon in the sense of "it is written that he must suffer" is inconsistent with the Greek idiom; that meaning is usually expressed

in other parts of scripture by γέγραπται ὅτι δεῖ παθεῖν ; the construction here is ¿λevoɛrai iva ráon. By transposing the clauses between the brackets, we should bring the passage to such close agreement with the Old Testament account, that I cannot help suspecting some inaccuracy of transcribers here, thus: "Elias shall first come and restore all things, as it is written of him." Now it is expressly written of Elias, that he shall first come and restore all things; and it is not written of the Baptist, but of the Son of Man, that the Jews should do to him what they listed. Besides the clearness and consistency arising from this amendment, the arrangement is brought to a nearer coincidence with St. Matthew, who places the reference to the Son of Man last:

But, even as the words now lie, they must necessarily refer to some future suffering of a distinct Elias, for John the Baptist was already dead. Therefore, as Malachi had informed us that Elijah the prophet was to come before a particular period for a particular purpose; so, in addition to this, we seem to learn from our Saviour that Elijah at his coming will meet with persecution in the fulfilment of his appointed office.

I cannot conclude without making some allusion to a tradition, which has been handed down by the Fathers, and was very generally held by Divines before the Reformation: viz., that Enoch and Elias are yet to come, and, by their martyrdom, extinguish Antichrist. The tradition was viewed in connexion with the prophecy in Rev. ii. 3 : "I will give power unto my two witnesses, &c." Now, without any reference to the meaning of that variously interpreted prophecy, I shall only remark that if Elijah is indeed to appear again on earth, there is nothing at all improbable in the fact that "he shall prophecy 1260 days (3 years) clothed in sackcloth (raiment of camel's hair)" as did his predecessor, John the Baptist, from A.D. 26 to A.D. 30, and that like him he should close his mortal career by a violent death. The mention of the circumstance, that "the witnesses have power to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their prophecy," i. e. during three years and six months, is in manifest allusion to a fact in Elijah's past life. (James v. 17.)

Those who would see more on this subject, particularly with respect to Enoch, may consult with advantage an interesting paper on " John the Baptist" by your Correspondent H., in Vol. I. p. 345; as to myself, I have great satisfaction in being supported by his authority.

Keysoe Vicarage, Beds.

W. B. WINNING.

• Trypho Judæus apud Justin. in dial. Irenæus. Tertul. lib. de Animâ, cap. 28. Ambros. in 1 Cor. 4. August. de Gen. ad lit. 9. 7. Gregor. in moral. 14. 12. Quoted in Gibbens' Questions on Genesis, who combats this opinion of the Fathers, but confesses its prevalence in these words: Sed non est papista ferè, aut scholasticus professor, qui hoc ipsum non docuerit.

EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.

SIR,-Many passages in the Epistle to the Ephesians confirm the peculiarity in St. Paul's style, inferred from c. i. 7, in my last letter, and serve to establish that the Almighty has revealed himself under the Christian economy in a manner apprehensible by our delegated powers. To be conscious that a merciful God enables us rightly to comprehend spiritual blessings from our experience of personal benefits, is confessedly agreeable to reason; and this consciousness, which faith in Christ brings, "puts on the new man, which has been created in the righteousness and holiness of the truth."

In c. i. 13, 14, St. Paul reminds the holy, or those who had been set apart in baptism at Ephesus for God's service, that they had been "sealed in Christ in the Holy Spirit of promise into praising of the Father's glory," in consequence of having "heard the word of truth— the gospel of our salvation, in which [word] also they had believed." To reflect that the Ephesian converts, though as yet unenlightened, knew themselves to be personally holy, or thus set apart for God's service in baptism, and were, therefore, conscious of their baptismal obligations; and again, that "the word of truth," so soon as it is mixed with saving faith in us who hear it, is made of God unto us "the gospel of our salvation,"-these reflections bring conviction to our minds that the gospel of our salvation points out the personal benefit which the holy Ephesians were to receive and derive by the gift of the Holy Ghost froin spiritually discerning the word of truth. The reading of our instead of "your salvation" is met with in many manuscripts; and the reference of the pronoun which to the word of truth instead of referring it to Christ, not only obviates the use of an ellipsis, which always militates against scriptural certainty on account of resting upon human conjecture, but removes also the objection, that the petition of the subsequent prayer for spiritual discernment on behalf of the Ephesians had been already taken for granted and forestalled. It also avoids repetition, connects the historical faith of the unenlightened with the immediate object from which it comes, and confounds it not with the saving faith of the enlightened. To supply his unenlightened converts with spiritnal discernment is St. Paul's principal aim in the epistle; and, in thus reminding them of the formula of baptism, into which they had already been admitted, he prepares them to comprehend the spiritual "grace, in which the Father has made the enlightened to know that they have been accepted in the Beloved," and "which he has made to abound toward them in all wisdom and prudence." He thus prepares them to "know what is the hope of the Father's calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in" themselves-"the holy ;" and what "the exceeding greatness of his power toward us"-the enlightened, "who believe according to the influence of the might of his strength, which he has influenced in Christ."

Another instance of the same construction appears in vv. 22, 23, of c. i., which make known to us that consciousness of spiritual discernment which a knowledge of "the riches of the glory of the

Father's inheritance" in ourselves supplies from our personal holiness. "Having raised Christ from the dead, the Father has given him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body: the fulness of him that filleth all in all." "In Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ;" and he then becomes unto us the fulness of God, that filleth all things in us, in consequence of his appointment to be head over all things to the church, when we believe that "God has given unto us, by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, enlightened eyes of our heart to know those riches of the glory of his inheritance" in ourselves, which have made us personally holy.

Although many other passages might be brought forward from the epistle to confirm the peculiarity of style, I shall at present confine myself to the two consecutive examples in c. iii. 16-19, in which St. Paul prays that God would "give" to the holy Ephesians "according to the riches of his glory-to be mightily strengthened by his Spirit into the inner man;-Christ to dwell by the faith in their hearts, in order that they might be enabled to comprehend, with all the holy," all grace; "and to experience" all favour, "in order that they might be filled into* all the fulness of God." In the first couplet of clauses, "the indwelling of Christ by the faith in our hearts" is the fruit of the Spirit, which personally develops and makes known "the mighty strengthening by the same Spirit into our inner man ;"—and, in the second couplet, "the being filled into all the fulness of God" is the spiritual fruit, which manifests itself unto us in our personal gratitude for the comprehension of God's grace, and the experience of his favour in Christ, which have come unto us from having been "rooted and grounded in love," and have made us holy.

The above instances, among many others, have convinced me that, in two consecutive clauses under the same government, the second clause is not ejusdem generis, but either that which personally makes known the spiritual blessing of the first, or that which lays up treasure for ourselves in heaven, from having comprehended the grace, and experienced the favour, of the first with gratitude. But, in St. Paul's epistles, more than two consecutive clauses are frequently met with; and, in this case, the peculiarity so extends to them, as to make them, like the links of a chain, mutually dependent upon each other; and to enable us, from our personal knowledge of the favour of the last, to trace it up (through the intervening clauses, and in the inverted order to that in which they have been revealed) to the grace of the first. "The great mystery of godliness," (1 Tim. iii. 16,) so far as I am aware, extends the rule to the greatest number of clauses to which it is subjected in scripture. In that passage, from the omission of "Oɛoc" in many manuscripts, and of " Deus" in the Vulgate, "God" is generally considered and interpolation; and the pronoun which [mystery of godliness] the nominative to all the annexed verbs. To trace the clauses up from the last to the first-from our acknowledgment of Christ triumphant as He in whom are all our means of grace and hopes of glory, to our acknowledgment of the manifestation of the Son

* Εις.